Flour Made From Insects Will Feed Underfed Populations

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insectsChew on this. Or just get a bag, because this is mamish nauseating.

A team of MBA students were the recipients of the 2013 Hult Prize earlier this week, providing them with $1 million in seed money to produce an insect-based, protein-rich flour for feeding malnourished populations in other countries. The product is called Power Flour.

“It’s a huge deal because we had a very ambitious but highly executable five-year plan in place,” said team captain Mohammed Ashour, whose team hails from McGill University in Montreal. “So winning this prize is a great step in that direction.”

Ashour, along with teammates Shobhita Soor, Jesse Pearlstein, Zev Thompson and Gabe Mott, will be immediately working with an advisory board to recruit farmers and workers in Mexico, where a population of roughly 4 million live in slum conditions with widespread malnutrition.

“We will be starting with grasshoppers,” Ashour said.

He noted that the insect is already familiar to the local diet and currently sells at a premium because of a three-month harvesting season and because grasshoppers are typically hand-picked. But farmers have already expressed interest in raising grasshoppers on a mass level, according to Ashour.

Read more at ABC NEWS.

{Matzav.com Newscenter}


13 COMMENTS

  1. Boruch Hashem,

    Just because we don’t eat it*, doesn’t mean the rest of the world shouldn’t have cheap, nutritious food.

    *although some grasshoppers are kosher

  2. So, its not for kosher consumers. For people starving in third world countries, it could be the difference between life and death. You’re nauseated?

  3. Genial move! This will increase exponentially the nonjews’ demand for strictly kosher-certified food. It will also be a huge help with the OTD crisis, very soon teenagers won’t be tempted to even drink a glass of water in the home of nonjewish or nonreligious friends. Truly brilliant.

  4. To #1, 2, 3, 4 and others

    Most nonjews find insects disgusting. Some find them a delicacy, but they eat them e.g. fried and other specialities (not necessarily eaten by poorer people only). Would you try selling flour made from processed beef’s bones to low-income Texans since in Texas they love steak? Or would you be afraid they don’t react kindly?

    I have a small proposal. Allow people to prepare, cook and eat whatever they traditionally do (incidentally, in the USA it is illegal to do so, even for private consumption, for many animal species that other cultures cook and eat). If charities can’t afford sending beef, chick peas will do, but excuse me, processed worms are something else. This scientific breakthrough should instead be used to prepare cheap and virtually unlimited animal food. Oh wait! I already hear the outrage! Insect larvae to feed the “BABIES”, the worshipped dogs and cats! Let the poor starving children and their mothers eat them!! Excuse me 1,2,3,4 and other commentors, this makes me stomach-sick even more than the worms.

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